


Hawk and Forge

by aspermoth



Category: City of Heroes
Genre: Angst, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Terrorism, Moral Ambiguity, Pizza
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-02
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2017-12-22 04:58:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aspermoth/pseuds/aspermoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will Forge and Umbral Hawk have been on a stake-out for days and they're starting to feel miserable. Time for something to lighten the mood. [Note: this is a purely self-indulgent piece of fic and a pair of Praetorian PCs my buddy and I liked to play back when CoX was around.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pizza on the Roof

Hawk and Forge were on a mission.

Then again, Hawk and Forge were always on a mission. Hawk couldn't remember the last time she'd done anything for herself bar eat and sleep, and even in her dreams, she was still following orders, still working, still fighting. Still on a mission.

There were other teams in the Resistance who were stronger than they were, and other teams who were smarter, but there wasn't a single team more passionate than Will Forge and Umbral Hawk.

And you had to be passionate for a operation like this. They'd been charged with a week long stake-out. Spending seven straight days perched on top of an apartment block watching low-grade office clerks scurrying back and forth so that they could work out when was the best moment to break in was more tedious than watching Astro Turf grow.

They needed to steal some paperwork. Evidence of the latest atrocity Cole's regime had committed against its people, from what they understood. Get in, grab the papers, and get out with as little fuss as possible.

Oh, and plant a bomb. A time-delayed device strong enough to reduce the building to dust and small enough to hide in the sole of her boot. But that was Hawk's mission and Hawk's alone.

Forge was too good to do something like that. She believed in a world where if you told people the right information and fought back only when necessary, good will win and things will turn out right. She was too noble, too kind, too... just too _good_ to do something like this.

Hawk was not. Never had been. Never would.

The sunset had just faded to the deep blue-black of night and a chill breeze was beginning to pick up. Cold didn't usually phase either of them – Forge's ability to augment her body through sheer willpower made her mildly resistant to the elements, and Hawk had the ability to create fire at will – but four days of bleak rooftops had taken their toll. Hawk was thoroughly fed up, and urging by the way Forge was wrapped up in her cape like a small kid in a blanket with a glum expression on her face, she wasn't doing much better.

_Time for a pick-me-up._

Hawk got to her feet and stretched with a yawn.

"You okay here by yourself for a bit while I go do something?"

"Depends. What kind of 'something' are we talking about?"

Her voice housed an edge of suspicion that cut into Hawk like cheese-wire to the throat, but it was hardly unwarranted. How many times had she excused herself and run off to do something that would make Forge ashamed of her? More times than she could count, and definitely more than Forge knew. She'd let slip maybe a handful of times and there had been dozens.

Not this time, though.

"Nothing like that. I'll be back in fifteen minutes. Twenty tops. Okay?"

There was a pause. Then Forge smiled, and although her face was pale and pinched with tiredness and the shadows under her eyes looked like a matching pair of bruises, it was warm and trusting and as painful as a slug to the gut with a baseball bat.

"Okay."

Hawk forced herself to smile back, and managed to produce something that resembled a smile – a thin, wan smile, but a smile nonetheless.

"I'll be back."

Hawk swung herself down over the edge of the building and onto the fire escape. It was so much easier for Forge – she could freaking _fly_ – but enhanced speed had its charms too, even if running faster than any normal human was meant to did make the fire escape rattle louder than a saucepan collection in a tumble dryer.

When she hit street level, she shrunk back into the shadows before anybody could spot her. On a normal day, she wouldn't have cared – she could run faster than any of Cole's thugs and even if she couldn't, she had the power of fire at her fingertips and a shield of electricity crackling around her. But they couldn't afford to let slip their watching post. It would screw the pooch on the entire operation.

So it was time to go incognito instead.

Hawk tapped the hawk's head symbol on her chest and her red and navy bodysuit, boots, cape and mask melted away into a button-down blouse, slacks, sensible shoes and the sort of spectacles normally associated with severe, bun-wearing librarians. She'd invented it herself, although she wasn't sure how it worked. Alchemy was like that. Some of the time it did nothing, and some of the time it created something useful but you didn't know how, and some of the time it completely blew up in your face and left you with super-powers.

It was unpredictable like that.

It had been Umbral Hawk stepping into the shadows, but it was harmless civilian Nichola Falcon who walked out.

The streets were almost entirely empty. There were few civilians and even fewer supers, although now and then a masked or cloaked figure would land nearby then leap away, or dart across at super speed, or swoop past overhead like a giant bat.

Hawk stared down at the sidewalk and rounded her shoulders and tried her best to look like a normal harmless citizen, but try as she might, she couldn't pull it off. She had too much confidence in her walk. She moved that little bit too fast. She didn't avert her gaze quickly enough when other people looked at her.

But then she'd never been good at fitting in.

She reached her destination inside half an hour. The costume changed lasted sixty minutes at most and she needed to be in and out before she changed back or she'd be in a world of trouble.

_Pizzeria Benvolio_ was deserted except for the teenager behind the counter, a short and portly young man with an acne-riddled face who was dancing along to the obnoxious disco music emanating from a nearby portable radio.

His name was Benny, short for Benvolio Gentile III, grandson of the restaurant's titular Benvolio. Way back when Umbral Hawk was Nichola Falcon and she still had parents and a normal life, she'd found Benny being beaten up by a bunch of older kids when walking home from school and had saved him. He'd promised to pay her back and ever since, she'd eaten at Pizzeria Benvolio for free.

Benny didn't look up when Hawk walked in. She had to clear her throat loudly before he swung around, frozen and blushed redder than any human being had a right to be.

"Nicky! Aw man, you didn't see me dancing, did you?"

"Every second of it, Benny."

"Oh jeez. It just... I get bored when it gets quiet around here, you know?"

"Truly you are the Lord of the Dance."

"Oh shut up!" He laughed. "What can I get ya?"

Hawk faltered. She had absolutely no idea whether Forge had eaten a pizza before in her life, let alone what toppings she liked. And Hawk wasn't exactly adventurous when it came to her pizza. Food was fuel: as long as it was edible, she didn't care.

"Uh, large deep-pan pizza, plain cheese?"

"Sure, coming right up."

They chatted while Benny stretched out the prepared dough for the base, spread on the tomato sauce, scattered over liberal amounts of cheese and slid the pizza into the oven to bake. He was doing well in school. His older sister was learning the ropes at the shop. His dad wanted him to join the family business full-time, but he wanted to do something better with himself.

Benny leant his elbows on the counter and stared dreamily into space.

"I just want to make a difference, you know? Help people."

"I know what you mean."

"Can I tell you what I really want to do?"

"Sure."

"I want to join the PPD."

Hawk's stomach gave a twist and her throat clamped shut. Words refused to come and she nodded instead and made a non-committal noise.

"Yeah, I know it's silly, but I think I could do it if I put in the effort. Do you think I could?"

He could. Hawk could see it. In two or three years, he could easily be a jack-booted brute, blinded by Cole, poisoned by the environment, desperately believing he was helping while stamping on the face of a teenage girl before the bodies of her parents had even gone cold.

"Sure," Hawk croaked. "Wish you well."

Benny's face flushed with the faint praise. "Aw thanks, Nicky! I knew you'd believe in me!"

They talked about his family and their misadventures until the pizza was done. Hawk avoided talking about herself and what she was doing as much as possible and resisted the urge to check her watch. It didn't tell the time, but it did say how long it was before her costume would change back.

And she didn't want to change back in front of Benny. Not now, not ever.

Resistance members had a price on their head. And what better way to start your PPD career than by arresting Umbral Hawk, terrorist and murderer?

Benny transferred the steaming pizza from the oven to a cardboard box and the box to a carrier bag.

"On the house as usual, Nicky. See you again soon, yeah?"

"Sure, Benny. See you soon."

Hawk walked as slowly as she could muster from the shop, then darted into the nearest shadows moments before her street clothes morphed back into her costume. She could wait, let the costume function recharge and then make her way back, but why bother? Why should she care if anyone spotted her now?

What difference would it make?

They all believed. They gorged at the trough of Cole's lies like pigs and they all believed every word he said. What was the point in hiding?

Besides, she had super speed. Nobody would notice her.

She was back at their stake-out building in less time than it took to boil an egg. She took the stairs two at a time and was up top in no time, although again it was unpleasantly loud. She should really invent something that would negate the noise. Some sort of special boot, perhaps.

Unsurprisingly, Forge had heard her coming. She was still huddled up in her cape and her expression was somewhere between happiness that Hawk was back and anxiety.

"Welcome back."

Hawk held up the plastic bag awkwardly.

"I, uh, brought pizza?"

All traces of anxiety vanished from Forge's face. She leapt to her feet, all but glowing, perhaps actually glowing – she did that sometimes; it was part of her willpower thing.

"No way! Really?"

"It's just plain cheese. I'm kinda boring when it comes to my–"

"I honestly don't care. It's pizza! I've never had pizza!"

"... you haven't?"

"Nope."

Hawk and Forge settled back down in their respective spots on the roof. Hawk set up the pizza box between them and opened it and both of them took a slice each and tucked in.

It was good pizza. Just the rick thickness of crust, not greasy, good ingredients. It should have been awesome. But with every bite, Hawk could taste the words "I want to join the PPD" and it made her feel queasy.

Nothing seem to be bothering Forge, though. She was tucking in as though she'd never eaten before in her life.

"You are an absolute life-saver, Hawk. This is great. Where'd you even get it?"

"I know people."

Night had properly fallen and the twilight shift had begun in the building across the street. The night guards were patrolling, little specks of flashlight gleam patrolling back and forth. Normally there were six or seven, but tonight, there seemed to be just the three. Maybe the others were sick, or maybe they didn't expect a Thursday to be particularly busy.

Hawk swallowed the last mouthful of her slice and looked over to Forge.

"I know we're supposed to be watching for another three days, but look. When's an opportunity like this gonna come round again?"

Forge swallowed the third bite of her fourth slice and nodded.

"Pizza first, then the mission. They'll be all alert and jumpy at the moment, anyway. We'll give 'em a couple of hours to calm down, then go for it."

"I can't eat any more. Not that hungry."

"You sure? Feeling okay?"

No, she wasn't feeling okay. She hadn't been feeling okay since she was fourteen years old and the PPD had smashed their way into their house and left Nichola Falcon lying dead on the floor with her parents, but she was feeling particularly bad now.

There was a bomb in the heel of her boot. It would destroy the building entirely. It would send a message to Cole and to the people and let them know that things were not okay. Things would never be okay. Not if they stayed like this.

Forge would know, though. Forge would know it was her who'd done it. And Forge would be angry and hurt and disappointed and agonisingly forgiving because it was Hawk and Forge believed in a Hawk that didn't exist, couldn't exist, a Hawk who could put things aside and become better than she was.

But that would never happen. Never would.

By tomorrow afternoon, the building would be rubble and they would be on another pair of missions and the tangled, twisted-up feeling in Hawk's belly would be a little bit worse and the bite of Forge's suspicion would be a little bit harsher and everything would be a little bit darker and a little more hopeless than it was before.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

It was getting easier to lie to Forge. That couldn't be good.


	2. Lying Low

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a mission goes belly-up, Umbral Hawk takes Will Forge back to her civilian flat to lie low.

Hawk didn't have much of a life outside of the Resistance. Why would she? Her civilian life ended the day her parents died. She'd kept up appearances for a while, pretended to be normal, but as time went by, faking it got harder. Every little slip towards the dark made acting like everything was peaches and cream more difficult and after a while, she gave up except for the bare minimum.

She had a shit-hole apartment where she slept on those rare occasions when she wasn't on a mission with Forge. She paid for it by ghost-writing essays for desperate college kids, CVs for idiots who wanted to join the PPD, that sort of thing. It didn't take her long to scrawl off something good enough for most people, and it kept a roof over her head and cheap food in her belly, and meant she had somewhere she could call home. Plausible deniability.

Hawk never took people home. Never handed out her address when in costume and only when absolutely necessary in her civvies. No boyfriends, no girlfriends, no any friends. Her apartment was hers and hers alone, like an extension of her own mind: bare, cold, and nothing but the essentials needed to keep life crawling on.

It'd been a month since she and Forge had staked out a building together that Hawk had gone on to destroy. Forge didn't know it was her yet. Or at least, that's what Hawk liked to think. A touch of self-delusion, perhaps: the skyscraper had turned to dust the morning after they'd broken in together, after all, and Forge wasn't stupid. But until she said something, Hawk was going to believe that she didn't know. A terrible coincidence. Unsafe construction. Anything except that Hawk had planted a bomb, destroyed public property and killed people.

Again.

Hawk and Forge were supposed to be on another mission. "Supposed" being the operative word. Some kindly asshole had spotted them passing by in the streets and reported them to the PPD. Now every single one of Cole's jackbooted chompers was on the hunt for Umbral Hawk and Will Forge. The streets were crawling with them. Cutting them off from the Resistance bases. They were trapped, ants in a jar with the magnifying glass creeping towards them.

They were a block away from Hawk's apartment. It was their only chance.

They changed into civvies before entering the building. Hawk's costume shape-shifted, of course, and she'd made Forge a similar one a couple of weeks ago. It didn't last as long as Hawk's for some reason – probably the inherent alchemical power within Hawk prolonging the effect, but she really had no clue – but it lasted long enough to get them both up the eleven flights of stairs to Hawk's studio apartment.

If she'd known she was going to have company, Hawk would've cleaned the place. She couldn't remember the last time she'd run a vacuum cleaner across the carpets or dusted the windowsills. And it smelled dank, like something despairing of all life and hope in the universe.

Bless Forge: she tried her hardest to look happy.

"It's, uh... nice."

"It's a shit-hole, I know. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's fine."

It was tiny, too. One big room with a bathroom the size of a broom cupboard stuck onto it. A kitchen too small for a stove. And not enough room for a bed and a sofa: instead, the single bed in the living room was piled with a few second-hand cushions that didn't match and would never match as long as colours still existed.

Hawk made some kind of gesture with one hand that was supposed to be welcoming, but was more a limp useless flail.

"Make yourself at home...?"

Hawk hovered by the doorway and watched as Forge wandered towards the kitchen and started opening the cupboards. They were embarrassingly bare. Eventually, she found a box of cereal that hadn't expired about six months previously, a carton of milk in the mini-fridge on the counter that was mostly free from lumps, and a bowl and spoon that were clean enough to eat from.

"Don't exactly dine like a queen, do you, Nicky?" she said drily.

It took Hawk a few seconds to realise that Forge was talking to her. She still wasn't used to Forge using her real name. It didn't happen out in the field much for safety reasons. And she still struggled to think of Forge as anything except Will Forge.

Except... now she was sitting on the floor on a cushion, eating a bowl of cereal and wearing her civvies (the costume hadn't changed back yet), it was a lot easier to think of her as Elaine Constance, regular citizen and... friend?

Hawk didn't have a lot of experience with friends. She hadn't bothered with them since she was a child and she'd forgotten how it all worked. But if there was one person in the world who was probably a friend to her, it was Forge.

Elaine.

"You coming?"

Hawk took the four or five paces to where For– to where Elaine was sitting on a bright purple cushion that was stuffed to bursting point with some incredibly soft substance that Hawk had never identified.

"You can sit on the bed, y'know," she commented as she did just that.

"Nah, thought you could do with a nap and I'll keep watch. When did you last sleep?"

Hawk actually had to stop and think about the question. And she couldn't remember, either. She'd never been a good sleeper (well, maybe when she was a kid, but certainly not since her parents were killed), she slept even worse during the day, and she and Elaine had been busy on night missions for what felt like forever. She was tired. Very tired.

But going to sleep made you vulnerable. The whole of the PPD was on the hunt for them. Even hidden in a civilian dwelling, even with Elaine on watch, they weren't safe.

"But what about you?"

"I'm fine. I can keep going long enough for you to have a break."

Probably true. Elaine's willpower augmentations kept her going a lot longer than a regular human being, and she probably slept during the day – Hawk could just imagine her in one of those satin eye-mask sets like people wear in spas and it almost made her smile.

But... Hawk didn't relax in front of other people. She didn't let her guard down around other people. And she certainly didn't let herself become unconscious around other people. Not even Elaine.

"I'm fine. I can keep going."

"Nicky."

Elaine's voice had a touch of steel on the edge of its warmth. She sounded like a mother talking to a five-year-old who won't go to sleep at nap time.

"Fine, fine."

Hawk lay down and closed her eyes, sure she'd never fall asleep.

"I'll wake you in a couple of hours," Elaine said. "Sweet dreams."

"Thanks."

What felt like moments later, Hawk woke to somebody gently shaking her shoulder.

"Nicky? Nicky. Wake up."

Elaine. Hawk opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was Elaine's face. Her hair was loose and damp – she'd showered in Hawk's apartment? – and she'd changed into the civvies she carried with her. She was smiling.

"Your turn to keep watch. Couple more hours and I reckon it'll be safe for me to leave."

Hawk sat up. Stretched. Yawned. She hadn't felt so awake and refreshed in months.

"Anything happen while I was asleep?"

"I cleaned your bathroom."

"You didn't have to do that."

Elaine shrugged.

"Seemed like the nice thing to do."

They swapped places. Elaine curled up into a ball and pulled a blanket up to her chin. In a few moments, she was fast asleep, her breathing deeper and her face relaxed.

Hawk could have gone to change into her civvies. She could have gotten herself something to eat – she couldn't remember the last time she'd had a decent meal, either. She could have done any number of things.

But all Hawk wanted to do was sit here on an ugly cushion and think about how Elaine could trust her enough to just go to sleep around her after all the things Hawk had done. Marvel at the fact she'd managed to drift off despite Elaine being there, despite the vulnerability, despite everything. Wonder where her usual nightmares had gone.

And that was how she and Elaine stayed until the morning came.


End file.
